The Royal Château of Blois is a château located in the city center of Blois, Loir-et-Cher, in the Loire Valley, France. In addition to having been the residence of the Counts of Blois and some French Kings, Joan of Arc also went there by 1429 to be blessed by the Archbishop of Reims before departing with her army to drive against the English, who conquered Orléans the previous year.
Blois is a commune and the capital city of Loir-et-Cher department, in Centre-Val de Loire, France, on the banks of the lower Loire river between Orléans and Tours.
An appanage, or apanage, is the grant of an estate, title, office or other thing of value to a younger child of a monarch, who would otherwise have no inheritance under the system of primogeniture. It was common in much of Europe.
MonsieurGaston, Duke of Orléans, was the third son of King Henry IV of France and his second wife, Marie de' Medici. As a son of the king, he was born a Fils de France. He later acquired the title Duke of Orléans, by which he was generally known during his adulthood. As the eldest surviving brother of King Louis XIII, he was known at court by the traditional honorific Monsieur.
Duke of Orléans was a French royal title usually granted by the King of France to one of his close relatives, or otherwise inherited through the male line. First created in 1344 by King Philip VI for his younger son Philip, the title was recreated by King Charles VI for his younger brother Louis, who passed the title on to his son and then to his grandson, the latter becoming King Louis XII. The title was created and recreated six times in total, until 1661, when Louis XIV bestowed it upon his younger brother Philippe, who passed it on to his male descendants, who became known as the "Orléans branch" of the Bourbons.
Alan II, nicknamed Wrybeard or Twistedbeard, Alan Varvek in Breton, was Count of Vannes, Poher and Nantes, and Duke of Brittany from 938 to his death. He was the grandson of King Alan the Great by Alan's daughter and her husband Mathuedoï I, Count of Poher. He expelled the Vikings/Norsemen from Brittany after an occupation that lasted from 907 to about 939.
The 4th House of Orléans, sometimes called the House of Bourbon-Orléans to distinguish it, is the fourth holder of a surname previously used by several branches of the Royal House of France, all descended in the legitimate male line from the dynasty's founder, Hugh Capet. The house was founded by Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, younger son of Louis XIII and younger brother of Louis XIV, the "Sun King".
The Duchy of Orléanais is a former province of France, which was created during the Renaissance by merging four former counties and towns. However after the French Revolution, the province was dissolved in 1791 and succeeded by five départments.
The Valois was a region in the valley of the Oise river in Picardy in the north of France. It was a fief in West Francia and subsequently the Kingdom of France until its counts furnished a line of kings, the House of Valois, to succeed the House of Capet in 1328. It was, along with the counties of Beauvais, the Vexin, Vermandois, and Laon, part of the "Oise line" of fiefdoms which were held often by one individual or an individual family as a string of defences against Viking assault on Paris.
The counts of Clermont-en-Beauvaisis first appeared in the early 11th century. Their principal town was Clermont, now in the Oise department but then within the ancient county of Beauvaisis in the province of Île-de-France.
The County of Blois was a feudal principality centred on Blois, south of Paris, France. It was created just after king Clovis I conquered Roman Gaul around AD 500. Between the 8th and the 13th centuries, it was amongst the most powerful vassal counties within the Kingdom of France, after having succeeded in surrounding the Capetian dynasty's lands of France since Blois annexed the Champagne.
Gaston IV was the sovereign Viscount of Béarn and the Count of Foix and Bigorre in France from 1436 to 1472. He also held the viscounties of Marsan, Castelbon, Nébouzan, Villemeur and Lautrec and was, by virtue of the county of Foix, co-prince of Andorra. From 1447 he was also Viscount of Narbonne. Through his marriage to Eleanor, heiress of the Kingdom of Navarre, he also held the title of Prince of Navarre.
Under the Ancien Régime, the goods of the House of Orléans comprised two distinct parts : the apanage and the "biens patrimoniaux".
The crown lands, crown estate, royal domain or domaine royal of France were the lands, fiefs and rights directly possessed by the kings of France. While the term eventually came to refer to a territorial unit, the royal domain originally referred to the network of "castles, villages and estates, forests, towns, religious houses and bishoprics, and the rights of justice, tolls and taxes" effectively held by the king or under his domination. In terms of territory, before the reign of Henry IV, the domaine royal did not encompass the entirety of the territory of the kingdom of France and for much of the Middle Ages significant portions of the kingdom were the direct possessions of other feudal lords.
Peter I of Alençon was the son of Louis IX of France and Margaret of Provence.
The County of Châteaudun was held in the 9th century by counts who also held the County of Blois. Theobald I created the first viscount of Châteaudun with the appointment of Geoffrey I, founder of the House of Châteaudun. The viscounts were entrusted with the government of the county of Châteaudun, records of whom are continuous from the mid-10th century. The actual rule of Châteaudun between the late 9th and the mid-10th centuries, and the relationships between the count and viscounts, is uncertain. The county was revived in 1439 when the region was recreated as the County of Dunois and granted to Jean Levieux Valois des Orléans, the illegitimate son of Louis I, Duke of Orléans, son of Charles V of France.
Hugh III, Seigneur of Le Puiset, son of Éverard III, Seigneur of Puiset and Viscount of Chartres, and Adelaide, Countess of Corbeil. Count of Corbel.
Blois-Vienne, or merely Vienne for locals, is the common name given to the southern part of Blois, central France, separated from the rest of the city by the natural border of the Loire river. It corresponds to the subdistricts of St Saturnin, La Creusille, Les Métairies and La Vaquerie, but also include the hamlets of Bas-Rivière and Béjun, although these ones are now administratively attached to the neighboring commune of Chailles. In other words, it is now the left bank of the Loire in Blois.
